Washington Memo; Faculty's Chilly Welcome For Ex-Pentagon Official

By JASON DePARLE

Published: May 25, 2006

CORRECTION APPENDED

Douglas J. Feith's table at the Georgetown University faculty club is shaping up as a lonely one.

The move to a teaching position at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown by Mr. Feith, a former Pentagon official, set off a faculty kerfuffle, with 72 professors, administrators and graduate students signing a letter of protest, some going as far as to accuse him of war crimes.

Some critics complain about the process. (He was hired without a faculty vote.)

Some complain about the war in Iraq. (Mr. Feith has been accused of promoting it with skewed intelligence.)

All say the open protest is unusual at a place that embraces former officials as part of its panache. A former secretary of state, Madeleine K. Albright; a former national security adviser, Anthony Lake; and a former director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, have joined the faculty without event.

But Mr. Feith, a former under secretary of defense for policy planning and analysis, is another story.

''I'm not going to shake hands with the guy if he's introduced to me,'' said Mark N. Lance, a philosophy professor who teaches nonviolence in the program on Justice and Peace and who organized the protest. ''And if he asks why, I'll say because in my view you're a war criminal and you have no place on this campus.''

The dispute can be read as -- take your pick -- an explosion of fury at a disastrous war, an illustration of the pettiness of academic politics or evidence of Mr. Feith's talent for attracting invective.

Gen. Tommy R. Franks of the Army, the top commander of the Iraq invasion, once referred to him as ''the stupidest guy on the face of the earth.''

In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Feith said he welcomed debate ''in a proper, civil and rigorous way.'' But he called the accusations that he had politicized intelligence, advocated torture and attacked the Geneva Conventions as ''false,'' ''flatly false'' and ''outrageous.''

A graduate of Harvard and the Georgetown Law School, Mr. Feith served in the Reagan administration and joined other neoconservatives in 1998 in calling on President Bill Clinton to overthrow President Saddam Hussein of Iraq.

Joining the Bush administration in 2001, he set up two Defense Department units that have drawn scrutiny. One was the Office of Special Plans, which took the lead in the Pentagon's preparation for a postwar Iraq, planning that has been widely faulted.

Mr. Feith also oversaw the Counterterrorism Evaluation Group, a small unit of intelligence analysts who examined possible links between Mr. Hussein and Al Qaeda. Although the Central Intelligence Agency disputed such ties, Mr. Feith's group produced a classified report that argued that the links were clear.

Two investigations have discredited that thesis, and Mr. Feith's critics have argued that he purposefully skewed the intelligence to justify the war, an accusation that he firmly denies. A third investigation, by the Pentagon inspector general, is examining whether the intelligence was deliberately slanted.

Preparing to leave government, Mr. Feith approached the dean of the School of Foreign Service, Robert L. Gallucci, about a teaching position. Mr. Gallucci has authority to recommend practitioners, who are not eligible for tenure, without a faculty vote. He recommended a two-year appointment, which the Georgetown provost approved. Mr. Feith will teach a course on the Bush administration's antiterrorism policy.

''I think the war in Iraq is a terrible mistake,'' Mr. Gallucci said. ''But that is not the criteria for whom I bring to campus.''

He said Mr. Feith, as an architect and advocate of the Iraq war, would ''bring to campus something we do not have.''

Professors in the school were widely opposed. But most who signed the letter came from other disciplines, where the differences from the Pentagon in bureaucratic culture may be especially pronounced.

One is Susan Terrio, who has appointments in anthropology and French and whose r?m?ists several writings about French chocolate makers. (''From Master Chocolatiers Today: Bayonne and the Basque Coast.'') She complained that Mr. Feith's appointment was ''presented as a fait accompli.'' She did, however, say she would shake hands with him.

Professor Terrio said Mr. Feith had ''defended the use of torture in public lectures,'' though she acknowledged, ''I can't point to a specific document,'' and said that characterization came from Professor Lance, the protest organizer.

Professor Lance said he was relying on a Newsweek article that said Mr. Feith had advocated ''new and tougher interrogation techniques.''

''I should be more careful,'' Professor Lance said. ''He hasn't specifically advocated torture. He's supported legal changes that make the use of torture easier.''

Mr. Feith, who denies defending torture, said unfounded accusations against him ''echo and get repeated.''

Charles E. King, a professor at the foreign policy school, objected to the appointment but declined to sign the protest letter, because ''I thought there were a lot of inaccuracies.''

Still, he added: ''I hope this story does not play out as 'pointy-headed academics diss Republicans,' because that is not what's going on at all. The stakes are who gets to teach for credit in what is still one of the top 25 universities in the U.S.''

Mr. Gallucci called the dispute potentially enlightening. ''This is what I want,'' he said. ''The debate has begun. The debate, the disagreement -- all that is good news.''

Photos: Robert L. Gallucci, left, a dean at Georgetown, hired Douglas J. Feith, center, to the dismay of Prof. Mark N. Lance, who organized a protest. (Photographs by Andrew Council for The New York Times, left and right, and Andrew Cutraro for The New York Times, center)

Correction: May 26, 2006, Friday
A picture caption with an article yesterday about protests at Georgetown University over the hiring of a former Pentagon official, Douglas J. Feith, switched the order of the men shown and carried illegible credits in some copies. Mr. Feith was seated; Prof. Mark N. Lance, who organized the protest, was wearing small glasses and an open shirt; and Robert L. Gallucci, the dean who recommended the appointment, was in the closeup photo wearing larger glasses. Mr. Gallucci and Professor Lance were photographed by Andrew Councill, and Mr. Feith was photographed by Andrew Cutraro.